Book Launch History

The Open Society Archives at Central European University and Bestsellers Bookstore in Budapest will present VERA AND THE AMBASSADOR: ESCAPE AND RETURN by Vera and Donald Blinken. Ambassador Andras Simonyi, former Hungarian ambassador to the United States, will introduce the book on Wednesday, 17 June 2009 at 4:00p.m. at the Open Society Archives at CEU, Arany János utca 32. Budapest 1051.

Jewish Quarter to be Saved

Galéria Centrális will open an exhibition by the society ÓVÁS! (PROTEST!) at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28, 2009. The exhibition is entitled An Alternative Perspective on the Jewish Quarter and will be opened by György Konrád. Probably a must. Here follows the announcement of ÓVÁS!:

CEU Conference

The Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, Budapest will organize a graduate conference on The Politics of Inequality and Difference: Critical Approaches in Anthropology and Sociology on June 12-13, 2009. Deadline for submissions: March 31, 2009.

Budapest

A picture from the heydays of liberal Budapest - when a whole (though short) underground line could be built within two years. And M1, the famous "Földalatti", Budapest's yellow line, still works. I have never seen this image of the construction on Andrássy before, so be full of admiration - and I am not telling your where it is from...

The M1-line so is a memento to both: a liberal mayor (for what Budapest was capable of) and the Siemens company, who more than a hundred years ago was capable of producing faultless underground trams (not like today's Combino crap...)

Budapest has – together with St. Petersburg and Vienna – one of the largest tramway networks of the world. The tramway type "UV" – standing for "Új villamos - New tramway" and pictured above – was designed in the early forties and is still a symbol for Hungary's once high-tech railway-carriage industry. With the arrival of the new low-floor-trams in spring 2006 – built by Siemens in Vienna and not too beautiful – this landmark of Budapest will vanish from the cityscape.